About Me

My wonderful husband died when I was 44 years old. Being widowed this young happens to less than 3% of married people. Writing through this loss one word at time helps me understand what I've lost and helps me continue to grow. It is how I have gradually recovered from such a severe loss.
Research shows that you can benefit from taking just 15 minutes a day to write out your deepest feelings as a way of healing. On the right side of this blog, you'll see a tag for Exercises to Try. If you need some help knowing how to use writing to help heal yourself, I suggest you start there.

Friday, September 04, 2009

I give up

I give up. I declare it here and now. I am giving up my obsessive pursuit of a new soul mate, a new partner, a lover, a new man to share my life with. It's too hard. I've tried. I've spent more nights than you want to know looking at pictures and reading profiles and driving into the city or meeting at Peet's for coffee with hope in my heart. I give up.

When Ken died, I couldn't think about the magnitude of my loss. I still can't, really. I could barely let myself think of that real man, that warm-bodied, soft-hearted, intuitive man with whom I shared a world-view, a good laugh, children, ..a bed, a life.

Instead, I had to skip over all the memories of our life together, my romantic marital dream, and try to imagine that I could just have it all again with someone different. How could I live without it? I had defined my objective: I will not be alone in the prime of my life, I will not be sexless and partnerless and alone.

Oh sure, if you dared me, I'd have a permanent status report on Facebook that would scream: Doesn't anyone know someone for me? I don't want to be single. I want to have a partner.

But no. I give up. And I open myself to what comes next whether it's watching Madmen alone at night after the kids go to bed or making it to the NYT bestseller list and launching a new career. I turn my back on the dream I had that I could have again the dream I once had which was the life I had once with Ken Jacobson.